A house on a hill filled with crochet, colour, music and love

Tag Archives: scrapstore

Oh! I have died and gone to heaven! Look at that.. All that shiny, twinkly paper in that trolly. Cardboard tubes, ribbons, card, strange materials and offcuts…. The trolly is heaving with crafty goodness. And do you know how much it all came to? A whole trolly full???? A mere £5. Five pounds!!!!!!! This my friends is Nottinghams scrapstore, called playworks. For those of you in this area, it is just off of huntingdon street. Scrapstores are charity establishments where local businesses donate their offcuts, odments and surplus bits and pieces to be sold for a minimum amount to fund a venture. In this case, playworks do street play and work in schools, workshops with children and more and a large amount of their income is derived from people like me, grabbing crafty bits for bargain prices. There is a membership fee…. £5 for the year in my case as I went on behalf of my local voluntary run children’s art club that b and I stumbled across in our local library.

Rows of weird and wonderful stuff. It just goes to show that old saying, that one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure. B and her little friend z seemed to be quite captivated in there, but I was very pleased to have my dear friend with me to lend a hand. Scrapstores are all over the country in the UK. Look up yours!!!! Do any of our international friends have a similar venture? I’d be interested to know.

I had some thank you notes that I needed to post this week and I had just the job. I’d pressed some more Autumn leaves and thought I’d cut some love-hearts in them so that they could be stuck to a window. They look really sweet don’t they!

And after all that immense growing and taking over, look at the produce of squashes. Mmm, rather disappointing. I suppose it is our fault for not realising they are supposed to climb until probably too late. Well, just a quicky tonight…. I just wanted to urge you to look up your local scrapstore, as it was a really worthwhile venture for our little outing today! Goodnight xxxxxxx

So today we were celebrating Hildas birthday. I’m not sure how old she is, but I know she is somewhere in her tenth decade. Wow…. I hope I am as fit and active when I get to that age. She has a great, great, great granddaughter a little younger than my little lady. I know Hilda from a trip to my library when b was only 4 months old. I love the library. It is so nostalgic of my childhood. The smell of the books and the high shelves make it seem so cosy, especially as our library is so small. The librarian that day suggested I go and have a cuppa with the ladies in the knit and natter corner as they’d love to see baby. I tentatively went over to see what they were making as it was all so foreign to me. My goodness, I was taken under their wing, despite the large age gap and I soon became a project to teach to knit! my first cardigan was knit 2 months later. I’m so proud of it!!! Yet it is still enormous on b!!!! I saw them crocheting and decided to research it on the net and with the help of many tutorials on youtube, I did just that and have loved it ever since. 7 months later, I had finished my biggest project, a beautiful christening dress for little b.

So today, it was fuddle time for Hildas birthday and it was lovely. I somehow managed to create these banana and oat muffins before 10am!!!

That is a huge achievement as I never seem to be able to get anywhere on time in the mornings.
B enjoyed sticking the wool on Hildas card. Happy birthday Hilda xxx

So, this weekend m set about creating me something to organise all b’s craft things. I bought these boxes from Ikea ages ago and hadn’t done anything with them….

M went and bought some pine and 5 meters of it later….

And several hours (as m is the definition of a perfectionist)….

I have this handy little unit to go in b’s play corner in my kitchen.

And I have already filled it with yummy items like ….

Cartons

Toilet roll tubes

Stickers

And paints. It also means my shelves above look a bit more tidy!

I’m afraid the labelling of items and love of compartmentalising is a teacher trait which I can’t seem to shake off!
I’ve just discovered the charity ‘scrapstore’. It sounds amazing and just our cup of tea! Local companies donate craft items and recycled objects and for a minimal annual subscription, you can fill a basket full for £1!!!!! I can’t wait to fill the empty tubs in my cabinet and take b on a trip to what I imagine to be a very close version of aladdins cave.

So here is a sneaky peak at this weeks project….

All will be revealed very soon!!!
But my ta-da moment today is this one ….

40 bottles of home brew!!!!! I’ve made wine before but have made these for m (and a few cheeky ones for me) to try to save money a little. I have christened the brew ‘the sneaky sip’ and it’s finally ready to drink. It is great!!!! A little sweet perhaps and I think very similar to my dads favourite ‘old peculiar’. I was worried that it would be flat….

Thanks for dropping in at Windyhill.
I'm Eve. I've taken a parachute jump out of the rat race for a while and am staying at home with my beautiful daughter instead. Life focuses around nature and nurture here on windy hill. There's many a craft go on, some attempts at baking and lots of alternative therapies and music.
I hope you enjoy your visit, do say hi!
Love,
Eve xxxxxx